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John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, discusses the diplomatic fallout following S. Korea’s conclusion that N. Korea sunk its battleship, indications that – despite the heated rhetoric – war will be avoided on the Korean peninsula, the breakdown of N. Korea’s prior NPT commitment thanks to the US government and the Japanese Prime Minister’s change of heart on a US military base on Okinawa.

John Feffer is co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. His webpage is JohnFeffer.com.

He is the author of several books and numerous articles. He has been a Writing Fellow at Provisions Library in Washington, DC and a PanTech fellow in Korean Studies at Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of World Policy Journal. He has worked as an international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia for the American Friends Service Committee. He has studied in England and Russia, lived in Poland and Japan, and traveled widely throughout Europe and Asia. He has taught a graduate level course on international conflict at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul in July 2001 and delivered lectures at a variety of academic institutions including New York University, Hofstra, Union College, Cornell University, and Sofia University (Tokyo).

John has been widely interviewed in print and on radio. He serves on the advisory committees of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea. He is a recipient of the Herbert W. Scoville fellowship and has been a writer in residence at Blue Mountain Center and the Wurlitzer Foundation. He currently lives with his partner Karin Lee in Hyattsville, Maryland.

John Feffer, Gordon Prather et al. speak of the breakdown of N. Korea’s prior NPT commitment thanks to the US government. But as Maidhc Ó Cathail has shown in "The Crisis Provocateurs," it was "the enemy within" the US government that provoked the breakdown…http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/09/the-crisis-prov…

This is hogwash and Feffer knows it. He describes South Korea as the aggrieved one "of course". Yeah, well, if you just assume it going in, I guess that makes it 'true', huh? Maybe NK did it, but it's very hard to see what would have been their motivation, and it's VERY easy why the NK hating, US loving SK government would have to gain from it, with elections coming up in June. The famous investigation was done by the usual gang of thieves long noted for lies about Iraq and Iran, but of COURSE the tin-foil hating fanatics of Antiwar simply assume that we must trust this cabal when it comes to North Korea. And no, Feffer, as you know, the evidence is NOT strong, but is very sketchy and could argue as well for a false flag attack – but OF COURSE, AS WE ALL KNOW, IF WE ARE SERIOUS PEOPLE, THAT THERE ARE NEVER ANY CONSPIRACIES!!!!! Oh nooooo, never.

And oh no, don't bother to point out that the US and South Korea were involved in a deliberately provocative exercise deep into North Korean areas – the particular island where the exercise happened was plainly chosen because it would be a very alarming thorn deep in North Korea's side. A PROVOCATION. They were practically begging for an incident, so who is to say they didn't help it along. You also might, if you gave a damn, point out that the sea border asserted by South Korea is plainly unreasonable, using the island in question as an excuse to draw a border just barely off the shoreline of a big chunk of North Korea.

And if you know your damn history, this whole thing started right after World War 2, when the US intervened with the utmost brutality in Korea to prevent the revolutionaries who had defeated the Japanese from governing as they had a right to do. In other words, all this is BLOWBACK.

Maybe North Korea did it. I wouldn't put it past them. But I wouldn't put it past the US and North Korea either. It's just not clear, and I'm not trusting the same people who brought us lies about Iraq and Iran on this, no way. And even if China agrees that won't mean a damn thing either, because they've signed onto lies about Iran too, just recently. What you need to start to acknowledge, if you really give a damn about truth and peace, is that we are not at a place in history where we can give credence to 'official stories', especially when there are obviously self-interested motivations involved. You mention one of the most important reasons yourself – the Okinawa base, Don't front that you actually think the US would never ever fake anything to help frame NK to get that base nailed down. And don't pretend you don't see that saber-rattling is key to Obama's election hopes in November, and that you don't think they would provide a pretext if they didn't have one.

And why don't you ask this: why was NK denied asccess to the evidence? You explain to me how it's just or even sane for North Korea to be convicted in absentia with 'evidence' they've never even seen?

I don't know what happened. What do you know about it, apart from your damn determination to savage any and all "conspiracy theories" other than the ones now officially recognized, and who gives a damn how true they actually might be, and how little credibility the officials have?